Economic Valuation of Shadegan Wetland

Shadegan Wetland is located in the southwest of Iran. It is one of the wetlands internationally recognized in the Ramsar Convention. Thanks to its variety of functionalities, this wetland has provided the local people with lots of job opportunities. As a result of being located on the oilfields, this wetland has nowadays been threatened by many projects which are being run in its vicinity, namely oil exploration projects and so forth which are running economic-environmental valuations. Lack of data about the economic value of the wetland has prevented such valuations. The objective of this study is to estimate the total economic value of Shadegan Wetland taking into account its use and non-use values. To achieve this goal, direct use value was first calculated using the market-based method. Subsequently, indirect use value, option value, and non-use value (existence value) were estimated using the method of choice experiment. Based on the results of this study, annual direct use, indirect use, option, and non-use values of this wetland were estimated to be $187104167494, $58568264206752217 and $387974436448, respectively. Also, based on the calculations performed, it was found that over 50,000 jobs have been created by Shadegan Wetland such that its total value accounts for 7.1 percent of Khuzestan province’s GDP. The time period of this study was the year 2014.